Sibongile Ndashe

Sibongile Ndashe is a South African lawyer and human rights activist. She has been involved in public interest law since 1999 and has worked for several women's rights and human rights organisations. She founded the Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa (ISLA) in 2014 and has worked to help lawyers across Africa bring cases to court involving gender identity and sexual orientation. She supports the incremental decriminalisation of homosexuality. In October 2017 she was arrested in Tanzania on charges of "promoting homosexuality" whilst discussing ways to challenge a ban on HIV/AIDS treatment by private health clinics.

Career Sibongile Ndashe has been involved in public interest law since 1999. Ndashe has B. Proc and Bachelor of Laws degrees from the University of the Western Cape.

In 2001 Ndashe worked under Johann Kriegler and Kate O'Regan as a research clerk at the Constitutional Court of South Africa. She was a legal adviser at the Women's Legal Centre from 2002 to 2007, where she focused on cases involving women's rights. Whilst there she worked on cases across the Southern Africa region involving human rights, discrimination and cases before the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights. They met at a hotel in Dar es Salaam to discuss how to challenge an October 2016 law banning HIV/AIDS outreach projects aimed at gay men, and the resultant closing of many Tanzanian private health clinics providing HIV/AIDS treatment. Police raided the meeting and arrested the three lawyers, nine Chesa members and the hotel manager for "promoting homosexuality", which is illegal in Tanzania. Ndashe was released and was deported to South Africa around 28 October. She intends to sue the Tanzanian government over their treatment.